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But reading the light science fiction is not the only science fiction I read either.

I have read Larry Niven, Gregory Benford, Arthur C. Clark, Frank Herbert, Robert R. Heinlein to name a few. Niven and Herbert were particularly important during my college years. Benford was by far one of the hardest reads because a lot of physics play into his writing.

Whereas the soft science/fantasy was about imagining worlds where dreams come true. A place where there are hard demarcations in the realm of good and evil. Hard science fiction was more the stark reality of space travel and a lot of the real life difficulties and problems that go along with it.

HORROR

Horror is Fantasy's ugly half brother, I think I heard it said. Certainly, the lines between horror/Fantasy/science fiction can be blurred. And of course in horror, there is always a spiritual element woven into the mix. The occult sometimes is used as a way to freak people out and scare them on a molecular level. Science is the other tool used to stand hairs up on end. For every good scientific innovation, there is probably a way to corrupt that into a weapon of some kind. Dean R. Koontz handles the horror of science in dealing with the "New People" in Midnight.

Stephen king, Dean R. Koontz, Robert R. McCammon, Bentley Little, Orson Scott Card are all authors that have the dark side. Robert McCammon weaves a story called "Boy's Life" about growing up in a small town that has a horror/fantasy world behind every door. Bentley Little studies the seedier side of the human Psyche and gives a dark bent to the most common of things in his books like "The Association" and the "Store." One is a bout the dark side of a store and the other is about the dark side of a homeowner's assocation.

Stephen King, one of my favorites, deals with horror of psychic phenomonem in Carrie and Firestarter, a maniacal car in Christine, and something dark in books like Pet Sematary" and "From a Buick 8. The scarier things for me are that which are the more commonplace.

One of my passions is to reading. I read books of many kinds. Rounding the numbers, I probably read about a book a week--give or take. Sometimes I go through feast or famine cycles. I am by no means a "speed reader" for I read more out of enjoyment than a desire to break any speed records of comprehension. Reading is an escape as well as a way to deal with problems on a hypothetical level.

As I think I mentioned elsewhere, the Lord of the Rings trilogy was my first favorite set of books to read chronicling the adventures of hobbits, dwarves, elves, and man in their fight against insidious evil. It was also a challenge to read that first set of books because I think it was the first time I stuck to my guns and read something that unlike other books, they did not have any pictures. Even the Hardy Boys books - that I read mostly out of obligation - had their occasional pictures.

The real fun of books though is the active role your imagination gets to take in the formation and visualization of the story. Whether it's imagining the cold in Jack London's "To Build A Fire" or the pain of rejection Pip must have felt by the cold Estella in "Great Expectations" I am not merely observing the story as I might at a movie, but actually participate with the author in the actual formation of the story.

SCIENCE FICTION/FANTASY

Back in high school, I started reading Star Trek novels and up until the late nineties that was my routine on a monthly basis. From the books based on the motion pictures, to the early series of Trek novels up until they began to splinter into the different spin-offs, I read Trek novels avidly.

Then I finally got "trekked" out and moved onto Star Wars. Whereas Star Trek painted an evolved, sanitized version of the future where humans were no longer slaves to their emotions, Star Wars was more down and dirty; there was chaos, there was unrest. There were cantinas, gangsters, and smugglers. And sometimes, they were the center of the plot and not some unenlightened folk on a backwater planet in need of humanistic reason (all trekkers feel free to go after me with guns blazing now)